Asus ZenBook Flip 15

It’s chunky and it’s weird, but we’re still intrigued

- CHRISTIAN GUYTON

THE LATEST ZenBook Flip is strange. It has a 10th-gen Intel CPU, but still uses the compact Max-Q version of Nvidia’s GTX 1050, a two-year-old graphics card. It’s got a 360-degree hinge, but it’s thicker than any convertible we’ve seen recently. The trackpad doubles as a tiny screen with numeric keypad functionality, but Asus still saw fit to squeeze a physical numpad on the keyboard.

It’s an odd, anachronistic product, as full of older hardware as it is brimming with innovation. The chassis is fairly bulky, with a 15.6-inch screen making the overall build a lot larger than sleek convertibles such as the HP Spectre x360 and the Dell XPS 2-in-1. It’s not heavy, mostly due to the plastic chassis, but it does feel chunky and outdated.

That 360-degree hinge is a lot sturdier than the plastic outer shell suggests, raising the keyboard slightly toward the user in laptop mode and ensuring minimal movement when using the Flip 15 in other configurations. The keyboard doesn’t share the same robust construction, though, with some keys making the entire plastic assembly flex alarmingly. The backlighting also isn’t very impressive.